The Turn of the Screw
1898
A young governess arrives at the remote estate of Bly to care for two beautiful, unsettling children, Miles and Flora. Within days, she sees them: two figures standing in the tower windows, watching. The previous governess and her lover, the valet - dead, yet present, yet beckoning. But are they real, or only in her fractured mind? And if they're real, why do the children show no fear? Why does Flora speak to the air and Miles ask questions no child should ask? James constructed something far more disturbing than a ghost story: a text that refuses to settle. Is this a tale of innocent children threatened by evil? A psychological portrait of a woman descending into paranoia? An account of actual supernatural horror, or one woman's erotic delusions projected onto the children she desires to save? The Turn of the Screw has haunted readers and critics for over a century with the same unresolved question. It is for readers who understand that the most terrifying thing is not what goes bump in the night, but the inability to trust one's own mind.
